Page 181 - UpperCrust e-Magazine Third Quarter 2024

FOOD & MORE | BUSYBEE FOREVER

We Are ‘Eggetarians’

Sunny side up, not easy over…that’s how Busybee,
an egg lover, liked his eggs. He also talks about
how Lord Mountbatten’s eggs were prepared, half
covered in mud and then carefully boiled in a bit

of water! Read on….

rom one of those kitchen equipment then the egg would be boiled precisely for
shops in England, and they make 50 seconds and served. I have not tried this,
Fmarvellous shopping places that the wife will not allow mud in the kitchen
Indians are just discovering, I bought two and in the pans.
small porcelain cups, with a matching On Sunday and holidays (what other
steamer, to poach eggs in. At best it is a holidays are there besides Sunday?), I prefer
cumbersome process: you boil water in the fried eggs, the yellows runny, the whites
steamer, then drop the eggs in the poachers, soft, definitely not over-fried. What the
then cover the steamer and allow the eggs to Americans call sunny side up, not easy over,
poach. The eggs remain warm, but you have though I have still not figured out what all
to scoop them out with a little spoon and eat these American terms for fried eggs mean.
them bit by bit. By the time you have finished And I feel very embarrassed telling the
your breakfast of poached eggs, you are waitress, sunny side up.
late for office, and the entire idea in having I prefer my scrambled eggs also to be easy
poached eggs is that they are quick to prepare and runny, and occasionally I like them with
and consume. the greens in the spring onions. And I do not
I prefer the half-boiled, soft-boiled know whose invention it is to eat scrambled
(which is actually quarter-boiled) eggs. You eggs on toast, the toast cut in a triangle, but
put the water to boil while you are pulling it is very difficult to eat eggs on toast
on your trousers, put the eggs in the water without spilling bits and pieces of them. All
while you are putting on your shoes, then eating should be simple.
quickly remove from the fire, put under a And I am particularly fond of the Parsi
cold water tap, so that you don’t burn your akuri, with tomatoes, fried onions, green
fingers, break the eggs, drop in a glass, add a chillies, kothmir, but not dry fruits. As for
little salt, fresh pepper if you like, and drink omelette, it all depends on what goes inside
them in one big swallow. You are in time for it: cheese − yes, mushrooms − yes, ham −
work, unless the trains are running late, or okay, jam − no, no.
not running at all. I am also getting a little bored with
Some people are more finicky. I knew a vegetarians telling me, “We are vegetarians,
cook at one of our local hospitals who had but we eat eggs. We are eggetarians.”
been Lord Mountbatten’s batman on the
Burma Front. At least that is what he said – Busybee
and there was no reason why he should be July 28, 1989
lying. He would say that Mountbatten, for
his soft-boiled eggs, had the lower half of
the egg covered with mud from the river
bank of the Burma jungle. The boiling water
in the pan would reach only half the egg,
or up to where it was covered with mud,

JUL-SEP 2024 | UPPERCRUST | 179